Article

The Complete Guide to iTunes Books, Podcasts + iTunes U

Although iTunes began with a focus primarily on music, it wasn’t long before it expanded its capabilities to include support for other types of audio content, including audiobooks and community-authored episodic audio content known as podcasts. As iTunes continued to expand its support into other media types and the iTunes Store grew in popularity, video podcasts were introduced as well, and the availability of a wide variety of podcasts on different subjects expanded dramatically.

Today, the iTunes Store provides a catalog of thousands of audiobooks and podcasts covering just about every possible subject you can imagine. In 2008 Apple further expanded the iTunes Store catalog of podcast-type materials by adding iTunes U, a massive collection of free educational material from various academic institutions for students, teachers and the general public.

With the release of the iPad in early 2010, Apple moved beyond audiobooks to expand into the e-book business, adding text-based books which it dubbed “iBooks” alongside a companion iBooks app for the iPad and later iPhone and iPod touch.

For the most part, iTunes handles podcasts, audiobooks and iTunes U content separately from your primary music and video library, placing them in their own sections in iTunes and providing distinct options to manage these files within iTunes and sync them to your Apple media devices. This article provides information for both the beginner and experienced iTunes user alike for getting the most out of your audiobooks, iBooks, podcasts and iTunes U content.

Audiobooks and iBooks

iTunes supports commercial audiobooks both in the Audible.com or in iTunes’ own protected AAC format. Note that unlike music content on the iTunes Store, most audiobooks purchased from the iTunes Store and all audiobooks from Audible.com are DRM-protected. As with music, you can import your own audio files as audiobooks, a process that has become much more streamlined with recent versions of iTunes.

For iBooks, iTunes supports titles in either the ePUB or PDF formats. Titles purchased from the iBookstore are in a DRM-protected version of the ePUB standard, although you can also import your own unprotected ePUB titles from other sources such as Project Gutenberg or import PDF files from any source, including those created on your Mac or Windows PC.

Note that although Apple uses the term “Books” throughout iTunes to refer to electronic text-based books that can be read with the iBooks app, for the sake of clarity we will refer to these as “iBooks” in this article.

Purchasing Audiobooks

iTunes and iPod compatible audiobooks may be purchased online from either the iTunes Store itself or from Audible.com. As mentioned earlier, all audiobooks from Audible.com and most audiobooks on the iTunes Store are protected by iTunes’ Digital Rights Management (DRM), unlike iTunes Store music purchases which are now all DRM-free. Audiobooks purchased from the iTunes Store come in the protected AAC format and have the same DRM restrictions as other types of iTunes content, basically meaning that they may be played on up to five authorized iTunes computers and an unlimited number of iPod or iOS devices that are synced with one of those five computers. Audible content, on the other hand, carries a tighter set of restrictions: only three computers may be authorized to play back Audible content, and you authorize and deauthorize your Audible.com account separately from your iTunes Store account. It’s also worth noting that due to licensing restrictions, Audible.com content cannot be played on the Apple TV.

Audiobooks purchased from Audible.com are not downloaded directly into iTunes. Instead, you must either use Audible’s own download manager to automatically import these tracks into iTunes, or download them manually and import them into iTunes yourself as you would for any other audio file. Further, unlike your iTunes Store account, there is no “Authorize Computer” menu option for Audible; you are simply prompted to enter your Audible.com username and password the first time you attempt to import or play an Audible audiobook. Keep in mind also that since Audible authorization is separate from iTunes Store authorization, if you’re planning to reinstall your operating system or upgrade or sell your computer, you will need to de-authorize both you iTunes Store and your Audible.com accounts separately. The option to de-authorize your iTunes Store account is found under the Store menu in iTunes, while the option to de-authorize your Audible account can be found at the bottom of the Advanced menu in iTunes.

Most of the audiobooks available on Audible.com are also available on the iTunes Store, and the main advantage of using Audible will be for those users who listen to a lot of audiobooks, as Audible offers subscription packages that work out more economically for avid audiobook listeners. On the other hand you can purchase audiobooks on the go from the iTunes Store on your iOS device whereas Audible.com content needs to be purchased on your computer and synced from your iTunes library. Audible.com does offer its own standalone iOS app for listening to your purchased Audible.com content, however this app does not integrate with your iTunes library—books are accessible only from within the native Audible.com application unless you download them separately on your computer and import them into your iTunes library manually.

Importing Audiobooks

iTunes also allows you to import your own audiobooks into your iTunes library in much the same way as your own music tracks. Older versions of iTunes made importing these audiobooks into the proper section in iTunes a relatively cumbersome process involving external conversion tools, but the good news is that as of iTunes 8 it has become considerably simpler to do.

With iTunes 8 and later, audiobooks can be imported into iTunes in any supported audio format. These files will end up in your “Music” section by default, but you can easily categorize them as Audiobooks simply by selecting the newly-imported tracks and choosing File, Get Info from the iTunes menu. This brings up the track information dialog box. From the Options tab, you merely need to change the “Media Kind” field to “Audiobook.”

Note that you may also want to enable the options for Remember playback position and Skip when shuffling as shown above. These settings are enabled by default for audiobooks purchased from the iTunes Store and allow you to resume listening to your audiobooks where you left off either in iTunes or on your iPod, iOS device or Apple TV. The playback position is also synced between all devices that are automatically syncing with your iTunes library, allowing you to begin listening to your audiobook on your iPod, for example, then sync your iPod and pick up where you left off on your computer or Apple TV.

The Skip when Shuffling option is similarly desirable to prevent audiobooks from coming up when shuffling large music playlists or the entire content of your iPod.

Both of these options are actually forced on for content purchased from the iTunes Store or Audible.com and you actually won’t be able to turn them off. Further, audiobooks that were manually converted to the M4B format to be imported into older versions of iTunes will also inherit these settings.

Another advantage of having your own audiobooks listed in the proper “Audiobooks” section is that you will be able to vary the playback speed for your audiobooks on your iPod or iOS device.

Note that some audiobooks that you obtain from other sources may consist of multiple files for each chapter of the audiobook. If you are importing an audiobook from CD, you can easily join the tracks together into a single audio file when importing the CD into iTunes by using the Join CD Tracks option; to do this, simply select all of the tracks on the CD within iTunes and then choose Advanced, Join CD Tracks from the iTunes menu.

When importing the CD, the selected tracks will be joined together and imported as a single audio file in your default import format. Note that this will not add any chapter markers to your imported audiobook however, so you may want to look at a third-party utility for this purpose. There are a couple of good software utilities that can merge multiple-file audiobooks into a single file for you and convert them into a proper audiobook with chapter markers: Audiobook Builder by Splasm Software (http://www.splasm.com) for Mac users, or MarkAble from iPodSoft (http://www.ipodsoft.com) and its companion Chapter Master product for Windows users. Both of these tools can handle the entire process of joining separate audiobook files together, converting them into an iTunes-ready audiobook file and importing them right into your iTunes library.

Purchasing iBooks

When Apple first debuted the iBookstore in April 2010, access to it was only available from within the iBooks app running on an iOS device. Books purchased in iBooks could be synced back to and managed within iTunes, but they had to be purchased directly from the iBooks app.

It wasn’t until over a year later, with the release of iTunes 10.3 that Apple finally allows users to purchase iBooks from their Mac or Windows PC. The Audiobooks section of the iTunes Store was renamed to “Books” grouping audiobooks and iBooks together into this single new section.

Purchasing an iBook works in much the same way as purchasing anything else on the iTunes Store, with the usual purchasing and gifting options available. Most titles also provide the ability to download a sample version of the book before purchasing. The sample can be synced to an iOS device in the same manner as a purchased book, and will include a link within iBooks to purchase the full edition. If the user chooses to buy the actual book, the sample is automatically removed in favour of the full title.

As with audiobooks, iBooks purchased on the iTunes Store are protected by digital rights management and tied to the iTunes Store account used to purchase them. Similar rules apply to iBooks as other iTunes media content: you can sync your iBooks to up to five iTunes-authorized devices and can only store content from up to five different iTunes Store accounts on a single iOS device.

You can also download previously purchased iBooks from the “Purchased” section in iTunes or within the iBooks app on your iOS device via iTunes in the Cloud and configure iTunes or any of your iOS devices to automatically download all new iBookstore purchases. However, as with music content once you download prior iBookstore purchases with a given iTunes Store account, you will not be able to download content with a different account on that device for 90 days.

Importing iBooks

Importing your own ePUB or PDF files into iTunes is as simple as dragging and dropping them in or using the File, Add to Library menu option. iTunes will automatically place these items in the Books category. For ePUB titles, iTunes will use the metadata embedded in the ePUB header, if any, to fill in fields such as the cover art, title and author; for PDF files, the file name becomes the title, and the first page of the PDF file becomes the cover art. You can further customize the tags for a book in much the same way as any other item in iTunes: Simply select the item and choose File, Get Info to open the file information dialog box and then edit the track information as you normally would.

For PDF files, you can also visit the “Options” tab and change the Media Kind to Music, Podcast or iTunes U to list the item in a different category. This is particularly relevant for items such as digital booklet inserts for music albums or supplemental documents that come from podcast or iTunes U subscriptions. However, this option can also be used in reverse if you want to move one of these PDF files into the Books section for syncing to the iBooks app on your iOS device.

Note that if you have electronic books that are another unprotected format, you can also convert these to ePUB for use in iBooks on your iOS device. Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com) offers a free, open-source tool that can convert electronic books from a wide variety of formats. It is also possible to find tools that can remove the DRM from some types of older audiobook formats such as eReader, although discussion of such tools is beyond the scope of this article.

Managing Your Books

Once in your iTunes library, management of your books is relatively straightforward. The Books category in the iTunes source list will display a view of all of the iBooks (“Books”) and audiobooks in your library which you can see in standard list view, Grid view or Cover Flow view. Grid View has the advantage of automatically grouping multi-file audiobooks into a single entry, based upon the Album tag. By default Books and Audiobooks

Other than their placement in a separate category, audiobooks are managed in much the same way as music tracks, and can be sorted, re-tagged and organized in the same manner.

Note that although you can listen to your audiobooks in iTunes, the corresponding feature is not available for iBooks; as has always been the case, PDF files in your library can be opened in your default PDF reader, but ePUB titles can only be read on an iOS device using the iBooks app.

Synchronizing Books

Synchronization of books to your iPod or iOS device is handled from a separate “Books” screen. For traditional Click Wheel iPod models, this will include your audiobooks; for iOS devices syncing of both iBooks and Audiobooks is managed from here.

From this screen, you can choose to sync all iBooks and/or audiobooks or choose specific titles for synchronization. Multi-part audiobooks also allow you to sync only specific sections of the audiobook. Alternatively, you can also build your own playlists of audiobook content and select them for synchronization if you prefer. Note that the Include Audiobooks from Playlists option only appears if you actually have playlists containing the appropriate type of content, and only those playlists which include that content are shown.

If you’re managing the content on your iPod or iOS device manually, the same rules as for management of music tracks apply—simply drag-and-drop your audiobooks from your iTunes library onto your device in this case.

Protected audiobooks and iBooks purchased from the iTunes Store have the same limitations as other iTunes DRM-protected files: They may be synced to up to five iTunes-authorized devices and you can only store content from up to five iTunes Store accounts on any single device. Audiobooks purchased from Audible.com work in a similar manner, although the limits in this case are a maximum of three devices and a maximum of two different Audible.com accounts per device.

Audiobooks with Remember Playback Position enabled will also sync their current playback position between iTunes and any other devices using automatic synchronization. Note that purchased audiobooks and audiobooks converted to the M4B format via third-party tools will have this option permanently enabled. With iBooks, the current reading position along with any notes and highlights are synchronized over-the-air via iCloud—iTunes has not part in this process.

Varying Playback Speed

On the iPod and iOS devices you can adjust the playback speed for your audiobooks. This option is found under Settings, Audiobooks on the iPod classic and Settings, Playback, Audiobooks on the pre-sixth-generation iPod nano models. On the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, you can adjust the speed of audiobooks during playback by tapping the screen to bring up the extra controls and tapping the “1X” button in the top-right corner to toggle between double-speed playback, half-speed playback, or normal speed playback. The sixth-generation iPod nano provides a similar control that can be found by tapping on the Now Playing screen to display the playback controls and then swiping to the left to bring up the additional repeat, skip-back and playback speed controls.

Podcasts and iTunes U

The most common source of Podcasts is the iTunes Store itself, which provides a catalog of thousands of audio and video podcasts. Unlike most iTunes Store content, podcasts are completely free. In fact the iTunes Store really only provides the directory of podcasts; the actual podcast episodes themselves are not stored or provided by the iTunes Store, but are rather downloaded directly from each podcast provider’s own servers.

For the most part, Podcasts and iTunes U Collections are handled in a similar manner. However, unlike podcasts, iTunes U content is provided only through the iTunes Store itself. Note also that while most iTunes U content is freely available, there may be items that are restricted only to students and faculty of particular educational institutions; the iTunes U service allows campuses to host their own internal iTunes U sites exclusively for their own students. This content will generally not be visible at all to iTunes users that are not part of those particular campuses.

Although iTunes U was actually first introduced to the iTunes Store in late 2006, these materials were originally treated by the iTunes application simply as podcasts. It was not until the release of iTunes 9 that iTunes U Collections received their own distinct category in iTunes.

Downloading Podcasts and iTunes U Collections

In spite of Podcasts and iTunes U content having their own separate categories in iTunes, they are managed in mostly the same way. You can browse for content of both types within the iTunes Store, and choose to either subscribe to an entire podcast or iTunes U collection, or simply download individual episodes that may interest you.

If you choose to subscribe to an entire podcast or iTunes U collection, the most recent episode is downloaded immediately and iTunes checks daily for any new episodes and downloads them automatically. Any older episodes that are available in the series will appear below the most recent one but by default are not downloaded automatically. You can download additional episodes by clicking on the Get button beside each individual episode, or simply click Get All in the heading to download all available episodes.

If you choose to download individual episodes instead of subscribing to the entire podcast, these episodes will appear in the appropriate section in iTunes, with a “Subscribe” button in the heading to allow you to easily subscribe to the entire series if you later choose to do so.

With its extremely large catalog of podcasts, the iTunes Store is the most common place to find podcasts, but you can also easily subscribe to any individual podcast directly. Some podcast providers will have links on their own web sites to subscribe in iTunes with one click, or alternatively if you know the direct URL of a podcast you can subscribe manually by selecting Subscribe to Podcast from the iTunes Advanced menu and typing or pasting in the podcast URL.

iTunes U content, on the other hand, can only be obtained directly from the iTunes Store, although it is also free to download. Note that you do not require an iTunes Store account to download either podcasts or iTunes U content, except for any iTunes U content that may be restricted to your own organization.

Managing Podcasts and iTunes U Content

Although Podcasts and iTunes U content are organized into their own respective sections in iTunes, each is managed in the same manner. Episodes are organized into their respective podcast or iTunes U collection, and the view can be collapsed or expanded to display the individual episodes below each heading. Audio and video content is organized in the same section, with video content being indicated simply by a video icon beside the episode. Note that some podcasts or iTunes U series’ may include both audio and video episodes or even PDF documents as supplemental material; these will be organized under the same podcast subscription heading with videos and PDF files indicated with a video or book icon, respectively.

iTunes keeps track of which podcast or iTunes U episodes you’ve listened to or watched, indicating unplayed episodes with a solid blue dot and partially-played episodes with a half-filled blue dot. The number of unplayed episodes is also displayed beside the “Podcasts” and “iTunes U” entries in the iTunes library source list on the left.

Podcast and iTunes U listings can also be viewed in Grid View and Cover Flow views. In Grid View, the number of new episodes within each subscription is shown as a blue badge count over the artwork. Note that this number represents the number of new episodes and does not include partially-watched episodes.

Buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to subscribe or unsubscribe from a selected podcast or iTunes U subscription and adjust your settings for how many episodes to download or keep for each subscription. Clicking the Refresh button will check your subscriptions for any new episodes.

The Settings button at the bottom of the screen will open a dialog box where you can adjust your Podcast or iTunes U settings, depending on which section you’re in.

At the top of the settings dialog box you can specify how often iTunes should check for new episodes: hourly, daily, weekly, or manually, with the default being daily. The lower section allows you to specify how many episodes should be downloaded when new episodes are available and how many episodes should be retained. For new episodes, the options are Download all, Download the most recent one or Do nothing and are fairly self-explanatory. The Episodes to keep option allows you to choose to keep either all episodes, all unplayed episodes, or the most recent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 episodes.

You can also override these settings for individual subscriptions by choosing a specific subscription from the Settings for drop-down menu, deselecting the Use Default Settings option and choosing specific settings for that particular subscription.

The options for iTunes U are identical to those for podcasts, with the exception of the references to “iTunes U” in the dialog boxes.

You can also exempt specific podcast or iTunes U episodes from automatic deletion. This can be particularly useful if you want a podcast or iTunes U subscription to normally only keep the last few episodes, but find one particular episode that you consider worth keeping around longer. To do this, simply select the individual episode that you would like to retain, right-click on it, and choose Do Not Auto Delete from the context menu which appears.

Note that this option will change to Allow Auto Delete when right-clicking on an episode that has already been exempted from automatic deletion.

The auto-delete settings can also be applied to an entire podcast or iTunes U subscription. If both options appear on the context menu, this indicates that some but not all of the episodes in the series have been exempted from automatic deletion. Choosing either option will change the setting for all of the episodes in the current podcast or iTunes U subscription.

Exempting an entire subscription from automatic deletion in this manner is basically the same as adjusting the custom settings for the subscription to keep all episodes, and was the only way to do this prior to the custom podcast settings being introduced in iTunes 8.

Another useful option that can be found on this context menu is Show all available episodes. This option will refresh the podcast to show all episodes that are currently available from the podcast feed. Episodes are not actually downloaded, but are displayed greyed out with a “Get” button beside each allowing you to retrieve any specific episodes from the feed.

Note that iTunes will stop downloading new podcast episodes automatically for any podcasts that you have not listened to in at least five days. This is presumably to prevent your library from getting cluttered with podcast episodes that you don’t regularly listen to, however some users who may want to collect episodes for infrequent listening may find this to be annoying. Simply selecting these stale podcasts and initiating a manual update by right-clicking and choosing Update Podcast from the context menu will resume regular automatic downloads until the next five-day cycle elapses. Mac users who would rather see this automated can check out the Update Expired Podcasts AppleScript at Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes, which will force regular batch-updates of all of your podcasts.

Synchronizing Podcasts and iTunes U Collections

Syncing podcasts and iTunes U collections to your iPod or iOS device is handled through specific screens in your device sync settings in iTunes. As with other Podcast and iTunes U settings, these two sections function in essentially the same manner.

You can choose to automatically sync a specified number of episodes, unplayed episodes or recent episodes of either all of your podcasts or iTunes U collections, or from specifically selected collections. Episodes selected for synchronization automatically will appear pre-checked and greyed out within the selection list, and you can also choose additional specific episodes to sync from each podcast or iTunes U collection.

You can also sync podcast and iTunes U content based on playlists. Note that the Include Items from Playlists option only appears if you actually have playlists containing the appropriate type of content, and only those playlists which include that content are shown.

Podcast and iTunes U sync settings are independent of whether or not you have your iPod or iOS device set to manage content manually. In other words, you can choose to manage your music and video content manually while still synchronizing podcasts and iTunes U collections automatically.

Listening to Podcasts and iTunes U On The Go

Any podcast or iTunes U episodes synchronized to your iPod or iOS device can be accessed from the appropriate section on the device. If you have created playlists containing podcast episodes, you can also play this content directly from these playlists in your “Playlists” menu. Click Wheel iPod models separate out audio and video podcasts into the Music and Videos sections, as do the iPad and iPod touch. Prior to iOS 5, the iPhone placed both together in the “iPod” application, but with iOS 5 these are now also separated out in the same manner.

Although video podcasts are not included in the iOS “Music” app by default, they will appear when searching for podcasts by name from the built-in search field. Podcasts contained in a playlist will also appear in the Music app’s Playlists section. Note that when playing a video podcast from the Music app it is played back in portrait orientation.

All current iPod and iOS devices now provide specific support for iTunes U content separately from podcasts. When syncing iTunes U Collections to older iPod models, audio items will simply appear in your iPod Music section and video items will appear alongside your Movies.

Newer iPod and iOS devices also provide visual indications of which episodes you’ve listened to using the same blue-dot indicators found in iTunes: A blue dot indicates that the episode is completely new, a half-filled dot indicates that you have listened to part of the episode but have not finished it, and the absence of a blue dot means that you have listened to the episode all the way through. Like audiobooks, podcasts are set to remember playback position by default, and therefore your current playback position in a given podcast episode will sync back to iTunes and sync out to any other devices connected to your iTunes library.

You can also vary the playback speed of audio podcast and iTunes U episodes on your iOS devices or the sixth-generation iPod nano. This works in the same manner as it does for audiobooks: Simply tap the artwork to bring up the extended controls and tap the “1X” button in the top-right corner of the screen to toggle between double-speed, half-speed and normal-speed playback; on the sixth-generation iPod nano these controls can be accessed by swiping to the left from the on-screen playback controls. Note that this option is not available for video episodes.

Other options available during podcast or iTunes U playback include a button to skip backward 30 seconds and a small envelope icon in the top-left corner that can be used to e-mail out a link to your favorite podcast via the iOS Mail application.

Note that older iPod models may still exhibit different behaviour when playing back podcasts from playlists. A common problem encountered here is that only a single episode will play back at a time from a given playlist. This is most often caused by the iPod having Shuffle mode enabled; since all podcast episodes are set to “Skip when Shuffling” an iPod in shuffle mode would effectively have no other episodes for playback once the current episode ended.

Downloading Podcast and iTunes U Episodes on an iOS Device

iOS devices also provide the ability to browse for and download podcasts directly on the device via the iTunes Store app. A “Get More Episodes” link is also shown at the bottom of your existing podcasts that will take you directly to the podcast in the iTunes Store app so that you can check for and download additional episodes.

Note that on the iPhone a Wi-Fi connection is required to download individual podcast or iTunes U episodes over 20MB in size, although these same episodes can be streamed live over a cellular data connection. Further, there is presently no way to actually subscribe to a podcast or iTunes U collection from your device—you can only download individual episodes. Episodes downloaded to your device will transfer back to iTunes during the next sync and if you are not already subscribed to the Podcast or iTunes U Collection it will appear in the appropriate section with a “Subscribe” button beside it in the same way as downloading an individual episode directly within iTunes on your computer.

Although iTunes 9 provides some greatly expanded sync options for transferring your content to your devices, these built-in options are not without their limitations. Most notably, automatic synchronization of recent podcast and iTunes U episodes remains a global setting. For instance, you can choose to synchronize the 3 most recent unplayed episodes of ALL of your podcasts, but there is no method for selecting five recent unplayed episodes from one podcast and three recent episodes from another.

Since iTunes allows playlists containing Podcasts and iTunes U content to be synchronized alongside the standard sync settings, users with more advanced requirements can turn to Smart Playlists as a means of dealing with these special cases. Smart Playlists can collect and group podcasts based on much of the same criteria used for other kinds of media content, allowing simple or complex Smart Playlists to be built depending upon your specific needs.

For example, you can easily create a Smart Playlist that simply includes the 5 most recent unplayed episodes for a given podcast:

Smart Playlists can also be used to automatically group recent podcasts into a single playlist, useful if you regularly listen to the same content during your morning commute, for example:

This playlist can be further refined to include only audio podcasts that are under a certain length:

An advantage of using Smart Playlists in this manner is that you can easily group several episodes from different podcasts into a single playlist for listening on your iPod or iPhone.

Podcasts and iTunes U episodes can also have star ratings like any other track in your iTunes library. Although the iTunes sync settings allow you to manually choose specific episodes to sync to your device, using ratings can be another useful shortcut for flagging those episodes that you might want to keep around.

In this case you would simply rate your favorite podcast episodes with five stars and they would be included in this Smart Playlist. If this Smart Playlist was selected for synchronization to your iPod then these episodes would remain on your device even if they no longer met the automatic recent or unplayed criteria in the main sync settings.

Under the Hood: How Audiobooks, Podcasts and iTunes U Collections are stored

Prior to iTunes 9, the organization of non-music content in the underlying file system seemed almost an afterthought. iTunes began its existence as a music-centric application, and as a result other content types were never stored in a particularly logical fashion. For instance, audiobooks were stored in folders named by artist in the same way that music content was stored, and a “Podcasts” folder was simply added into the “iTunes Music” folder structure alongside the artist folders.

iTunes 9 introduced a new folder structure which properly subdivides your media content by type, resulting in far less clutter at the top level of the iTunes Media folder. Audiobooks, Podcasts and iTunes U contnet are now stored in appropriate folders by content type, with Audiobooks further subdivided by artist (author) and Podcasts and iTunes U content organized further into sub-folders by Podcast or iTunes U Collection name.

New libraries started with iTunes 9 or later will get this media organization layout by default. However, if you’ve upgraded from an older version of iTunes, the previous storage layout is retained for backward compatibility. You can easily convert to the new layout, however, simply by using the Organize Library option found on the iTunes File menu. More information on this can be found in our article on Transferring your iTunes Library

Caveats, Limitations, and Conclusions

Although support for audiobooks and podcasts has been around for years, it remained mostly stagnant until iTunes 8, which made some nice improvements in allowing podcast settings to be managed on an individual basis. Likewise, it is only in the past couple of years that iPod and iOS device support for podcasts has become more stable and consistent in terms of how podcasts are organized and played back on Apple’s portable media devices.

Unfortunately, despite the ability to download podcast and iTunes U episodes directly to an iOS device via the iTunes Store app, the iOS platform continues to lack any kind of subscription capability to automatically update this content. Despite Apple’s efforts to untether the iOS platform from a PC, subscribing to and automatically downloading episodes remains the domain of iTunes on the desktop—an odd omission with this year’s emphasis on iTunes in the Cloud and Apple’s new iTunes Match service. Avid podcast users will need to either manually fetch new episodes on their iOS device as needed or sync to their iTunes library on a regular basis to get new content automatically delivered. Alternatively, users who spend a lot of time away from their iTunes library may be forced to look to third-party apps to sync and manage their podcasts in order to fill this gap in functionality.

Comments

1

I think your Audible information on DRM may be outdated. According to their help section: “Each Audible.com customer is allowed 4 desktop activations and 3 device activations for each type.”
I don’t know what “each type” is, but it sounds like at least you can authorize 4 computers rather than 2. Also you can listen through a browser. I am unclear if you can only do this through a browser on an authorized computer, or if any computer will work. In practice I have been able load Audible books on to any iPod as long as I do it from the authorized iTunes account. I don’t know if the 3 device limit applies when syncing from iTunes, but I think not. I believe I’d had the same book working on 4 iPods at a time.

The one thing iTunes has over Audible is the ability to download books on the fly (with an iPhone or iPod Touch). As far as I know, there’s no way to get an Audible book without syncing to your computer.

Posted by Rob E. in Toronto on November 12, 2009 at 10:38 AM (CST)

1

Thanks for the feedback. You’re correct that Audible.com has indeed increased the limit on authorized computers to three. I’ve updated the article to reflect this as well as noting your additional comments on the advantage of being able to purchase iTunes Store audiobooks on the go.

Note that Audible’s “device limit” refers to other Audible-compatible devices and actually doesn’t apply to iPod or iPhone devices. As with iTunes Store DRM purchases, you can have Audible content on an unlimited number of iPod or iPhone devices as long as it has been synced from one of your three authorized computers. A two account per device limit does apply to the iPod and iPhone, presumably to prevent you from going around and collecting content from all of your friends’ libraries.

A similar limit exists for iTunes Store purchases as well, although in the case of the iTunes Store it’s five different accounts per device, rather than two.

Posted by Jesse Hollington in Toronto on November 12, 2009 at 11:14 AM (CST)

1

Very helpful. Thanks.

Posted by gary house in Toronto on November 12, 2009 at 11:52 PM (CST)

1

Might just be me, but i was putting an Itunes U lecture series on my phone. How the files were listed in my Itunes U section they were out of order. I tried making a playlist with the correct order but it only showed me the videos and none of the audio. I see the correct playlist in Itunes when I’m docked, but it does not show me the complete list undocked. Even tried smart playlist. Again showed up in itunes but not on the iphone correctly. Anyone hear of this one?

Posted by Jerry Langfitt in Canton Ohio in Toronto on November 18, 2009 at 1:59 PM (CST)

1

I would like to know how to go about adding an Audiobook from my PC to the iTunes store.

Posted by Folajimi Alamudun in Toronto on November 19, 2009 at 3:04 PM (CST)

1

Wow,

Pretty complicated when you can get free <a >audiobooks</a> in just a few clicks with emusic

Posted by Mark Linn in Toronto on November 19, 2009 at 6:56 PM (CST)

1

iTunes U is terrible for a regular interested audience to use - simple podcasts for classes were much better. For example, I’m interested in a physiology class this month.
1) No reviews - how am I supposed to determine which class to pick?
2) Organization by Institution, not by topic. I don’t care where it is!
3) On my iPhone, the iTunes U filing is cumbersome. Why not just a podcast?

Posted by Aurora Millikan in Toronto on December 3, 2009 at 10:42 AM (CST)

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The playback speed controls do not appear on my iPhone 3G for iTunes U audio lectures. I get instead the repeat/Genius/shuffle buttons. How can I get the playback speed control to appear?

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I can not change the media type to audiobook, it not even in the drop down and ideas?

Posted by TheWhale in Toronto on January 7, 2010 at 8:15 PM (CST)

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I have been having trouble finding audio books on iTunes. What I mean is that under nonfiction, there are five pages of results, but iTunes carries many more nonfiction audio books than are listed on these pages. The same is true for all categories. There are many audio books that are not listed in any category but can only be found by searching for that particular title.
What I’d like to know is if there is a comprehensive list of every audio book available on iTunes and how I might access that page. Thank you.

Posted by Lisa in Toronto on February 2, 2010 at 12:42 PM (CST)

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Very useful article, thanks!
On my ITouch, the Audiobooks section has a separate subcategory for my Audible books. Is it possible to create my own subcategories so that I can create a bit of order to my many different subject types of audiobooks?

Posted by Nick G in Toronto on March 11, 2010 at 5:50 AM (CST)

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The new iTunes Media file organization sucks for audiobooks. It now sorts only by author and does not subdivide by title. Very annoying.

Posted by Steve in Toronto on May 19, 2010 at 11:38 PM (CDT)

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i have a problem in that when i try to play an audiobook on my ipod classic(80gb), i can only ever play one at a time. that is to say when i try to play a chapter from a book it says ‘1 of 1’ and i can never get the other chapters to play afterwards automatically. i’ve even tried putting them into a playlist but still can only play one track from within that playlist, then i have to go back and select a new track.

extra info: i created the m4b files myself from mp3 files.

Posted by michael in Toronto on May 21, 2010 at 7:44 AM (CDT)

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@ Michael:
I just had the same problem, and it turns out that I had set the iPod to “shuffle”, and all my audiobook tracks are set to “skip when shuffling”. I changed the setting to “play tracks sequentially” and it fixed the problem. Hope that helps!

Posted by Alison Blanchard in Toronto on May 22, 2010 at 12:12 AM (CDT)

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genius! thank you so much. i’ve honestly been looking for a fix for that for ages!

Posted by michael in Toronto on May 22, 2010 at 5:46 AM (CDT)

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I have a new ipod nano to replace my old one. It now announces each podcast when I play, which is annoying enough, but whenever I rewind to catch something I missed, it restates what podcast I am looking for, its date, content, etc. I HATE THIS!!!! I assumed I could turn the into off, but can’t find anywhere to do this. Help!

Posted by mocd in Toronto on May 29, 2010 at 10:46 PM (CDT)

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thanks so much for this. I was going crazy wondering why the audio on only the audio podcasts on my ipod touch was so distorted. I must have hit the 1/2x button by mistake.

Posted by calaok in Toronto on June 8, 2010 at 9:41 PM (CDT)

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I have an old 40GB iPod 4G (circa 2004) that is finally showing signs of malfunctioning, so I bought a new 160GB iPod Classic to use instead.

The problem I’m having is similar to Michael’s, but different—I like to listen to audiobook files in shuffle mode. Why? I’m not listening to anything in sequence, there’s different content in all the files, plus this gives me the advantage of playing audio at a faster speed.

This was never a problem for me on the old iPod. Since the model is so old and since I resisted later software updates, my audiobook files were able to play in shuffle mode.

But on the new iPod, if I try to listen to a playlist of audiobook files in shuffle mode, it doesn’t work. But I can hear the playlist of files OK if I shut off Shuffle.

Inspecting the audiobook files in iTunes, I see that setting the files either as m4bs or Audiobooks automatically makes them skip while shuffling—there’s no way to uncheck that box.

Is there any way to shuffle a playlist of files that have been set up to be able to be played at a faster speed?

Posted by Plan-K in Toronto on June 24, 2010 at 4:21 PM (CDT)

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As of today there is an Audible app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. This app makes it possible to download items from your Audible library to your iPod Touch or iPhone. The app does not make it possible to purchase content from Audible, nor does it move the file to your iTunes library on your device, but you can still purchase the file from the web site, then download and listen to it from Audible application. Still not nearly as convenient as using the iTunes store, but at least it’s no longer impossible to get Audible content on to your device without syncing to a computer.

Posted by Rob E. in Toronto on July 12, 2010 at 1:57 PM (CDT)

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Dear folks, I downloaded audio books to my Itunes account and was able to sync them to my Ipod. Now when plugging in my IPOD,and looking at the IPOD itself through my computer, I find 2 audiobooks that are no longer accessible on my IPOD. I also do not have them on my ITunes account. How do I either access the audiobooks(they are not in my music or audiobook folders on the computer or ITunes,nor accessible on my IPOD or conversely delete them from my IPOD. Please answer as soon as possible as I work in a library and am getting patrons with the same issues. Thank you for your kind response, Karel

Posted by karel richards in Toronto on July 19, 2010 at 10:48 PM (CDT)